Railway stations – Hell for a perfectionist

[SANTIMEL]

Goal

Correct mistake.

Situation

The positioning of trains in different directions, is different.
This problem does not allow the use of only six containers per wagon. For loading/unloading .
This forces the addition of a seventh container.

[Illiander42]

This is because rails are on a 2-grid, wagons are 6 long, and have a 1 gap between them.

[SANTIMEL]

This is because rails are on a 2-grid, wagons are 6 long, and have a 1 gap between them.

Why is there an asymmetry in different directions?
Although not. I'm not even interested in that.
Just let them fix it.

[MeduSalem]

Why is there an asymmetry in different directions?

As Illiander wrote... It is the 1 tile offsets (from couplings) in a 2x2 grid which result in asymmetry when making stations in the opposite direction.

Just let them fix it.

To be honest I am not sure if they can fix that. The 1 tile offsets in a 2x2 grid will always result in some train or station configurations breaking the symmetry.


The only "universal" solution that I can think of that would make it symmetrical for any train configuration would require reworking the positioning of couplings, maybe even size of wagons & locomotives and thereby the graphics. I doubt it is worth the effort. ^^

[FuryoftheStars]

This does not "force" doing anything. You do not "have" to place 7, and doing so just cramps up your available space, anyway.

IMO, does not need fixing.

[Nidan]

Space the stations in such a way that an odd number of rolling stock fits in between. Then they'll line up in both directions.

Your pictured 1-4 is six rolling stock long after accounting for the locomotive going the opposite direction. Try e.g. a 1-3 or 1-5 setup instead.

[SANTIMEL]

This does not "force" doing anything. You do not "have" to place 7, and doing so just cramps up your available space, anyway.

IMO, does not need fixing.

Come back to reality!

6560-240510-115837868.png (1.07 MiB) Viewed 2299 times

[FuryoftheStars]

This does not "force" doing anything. You do not "have" to place 7, and doing so just cramps up your available space, anyway.

IMO, does not need fixing.

Come back to reality!

So first, I want to note that picture does not show for me. You're better off attaching pics direct to posts vs using 3rd party sites in order to avoid exactly that. If I hadn't quoted you, I would've never known that was there.

Second, as someone else already said, that's an artifact of the 2 tile offset of rails and that railcars are 6 tiles with a 1 tile gap (effectively making them a length that is not divisible by 2). I doubt that this can be "fixed" without redesigning the whole thing from the ground up. Your solutions are (from left to right) either use an odd number of cars in the train, park your trains so the last car lines up with the loco of the others, or shift your inserters up/down by that one tile (a 7th inserter is still not needed...).

Screenshot 2024-05-10 015933.png (648.72 KiB) Viewed 2301 times

[SANTIMEL]

I don't understand how you align the wagons?
After all, the game itself determines the places for the construction of stations.
Do you use any mods?

It doesn't matter though.
We need to fix this flawed foundation!
And I don't understand all the excuses about the odd and even something out there.

Just let them fix the accumulated problems.
It doesn't matter how.

6560-240510-1158378682.png (1.31 MiB) Viewed 2283 times

[FuryoftheStars]

I don't understand how you align the wagons?
After all, the game itself determines the places for the construction of stations.
Do you use any mods?

No, no mods. It's just math.

It doesn't matter though.
We need to fix this flawed foundation!
And I don't understand all the excuses about the odd and even something out there.

Just let them fix the accumulated problems.
It doesn't matter how.

Well, aside from completely rewriting trains & rails to not use a 2 tile offset, the other options are (and by "cars" below, I'm including locos):

1. Remove the 1 tile gap between cars: ugly and crams everything together
2. Add an extra 1 tile gap between cars: looks ridiculous
3. Shrink the length of cars by 1 tile: now we can only have 5 inserters per car
4. Increase the length of cars by 1 tile: now it's 7 inserters and medium power poles won't reach the center inserters from the gaps at the ends

All of which are bad in their own way, imo....
[Edit: Oh, and forgot to mention, changing the spacing or car sizes, while it'd "fix" it for even cargo wagon trains, would then "break" it for the odds.]

The only other thing would be to allow the station itself to not be 2x2 aligned, but I don't know if there are technical reasons for it being that way that can't be undone without a full redesign, and that's definitely not worth it for this.

[Kyralessa]

So first, I want to note that picture does not show for me.

This is probably a CDN issue.

Have a look here for how to fix it:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=112882&p=607959#p607959

[FuryoftheStars]

So first, I want to note that picture does not show for me.

This is probably a CDN issue.

Have a look here for how to fix it:

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=112882&p=607959#p607959

I use Firefox, though the instructions here appear to be mostly the same, but there is no "Clear Cache" or similar option when right clicking.

That said, looking through the list that revealed, I discovered the real issue:

Screenshot 2024-05-10 082509.png (11.41 KiB) Viewed 2183 times

Simply disabling the adblocker for here (I mean, there are no ads here anyway) fixed it. Thanks for the suggestion that lead to finding that.

Still, I feel like folks should use the forum attachments more often than 3rd party hosting as I've had the reverse happen before (loads on my PC just fine, but then doesn't on my phone (no adblocker there)), as well as by posting here there's no automatically deleted after X months like many 3rd party sites do (yes, attachments get deleted on the really old posts here too sometimes, but it feels like that's a pretty rare occurrence).

[Tertius]

I don't understand how you align the wagons?
After all, the game itself determines the places for the construction of stations.

It has pointed out that's all due to the 2 tile snapping grid for rails, and the 7 tile spacing for the 6 tile wagon plus 1 tile space between wagons, so every other tile is skipped for placing rail related items.
It looks like this:

2024-05-10 15-00-45 start=1 length=20 fps=10.gif (724.03 KiB) Viewed 2167 times

As far as I see, the option to change the wagon length to 7 (or 5) or to change the space between the wagons to 0 or 2 to make the wagon spacing align with the rail grid is far worse than having a perfect station alignment.
Just dealing with it is probably the most reasonable thing to do. The only reasonable fix I see would probably be to make wagons and locomotives 7 tiles long, but I'm unable to evaluate the consequences of this, because the train and station game mechanic would significantly change. One tile more space per wagon is quite significant.
I'm quite sure this has been evaluated by the devs before and apparently not implemented.

[FuryoftheStars]

The only reasonable fix I see would probably be to make wagons and locomotives 7 tiles long, but I'm unable to evaluate the consequences of this

This would actually swap which length trains experience the "issue". Currently, 1-X trains where X is an even number (so the whole train has an odd number of entities) has this alignment "issue", whereas trains where X is an odd number (so the whole train has an even number of entities) don't. Changing any of the properties I had mentioned before, including increasing loco/wagon length to 7, would simply swap the "problem" between the two.

As such, another "fix" for the OP would be to make their 1-4 trains into 2-4.

[Illiander42]

There's a question I don't think anyone has asked yet:

Why would anyone ever have two different directions of train stations sitting next to each other like that!?

[MeduSalem]

There's a question I don't think anyone has asked yet:

Why would anyone ever have two different directions of train stations sitting next to each other like that!?

I might be leaning out of the window but likely because OP has not played Factorio for a very long time yet. ^^


I remember when I did opposite direction stations similar to OP something like 9-10 years ago.
Back then, still being relatively new to the game, I thought drive-through stations for both directions would be enough to handle all the resource/item throughput. xD

But if you have enough experience and did some bigger bases and considerably bigger rail networks you realize a rail network designed that way won't work on large scale anyway.

[SANTIMEL]

This is relevant at the initial stage of the game.
And also in a hardcore game, with the minimum possible amount of resources, at the maximum distance from each other.
Where to build two directions is impractical.
There you think about how to save money, not to attract unnecessary attention of enemies. Because there simply won't be enough resources for defense.
And if it's enough. But there are not enough resources for research.
Because of this, the evolution of enemies will outstrip the defense capability of the base.

[Illiander42]

This is relevant at the initial stage of the game.

It's really not.

And also in a hardcore game, with the minimum possible amount of resources, at the maximum distance from each other.

That actually makes it easier to use pretty rail layouts, because you have so much more space.

Where to build two directions is impractical.

Aren't you the one talking about building stations in two directions? Have you just found out why people don't do it?

There you think about how to save money, not to attract unnecessary attention of enemies. Because there simply won't be enough resources for defense.
And if it's enough. But there are not enough resources for research.

Landmines are wonderful, wonderful things. As are fire and funnels.

Because of this, the evolution of enemies will outstrip the defense capability of the base.

Current deathworld record is just under 3 hours to launch a rocket. Once you've launched a rocket, handling 100% evolution biters isn't hard.